DiNapoli: Dept of Labor lacking wage theft inquiry

An audit finds that the state Department of Labor isn’t completing its investigations into wage theft in a timely manner and thousands of cases still remain unresolved.

The audit released Friday by Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office found that as of last August, the department had more than 17,000 open cases, an increase of about 150 percent from the 7,000 cases they had at the start of 2008.

Of those, 9,300 are active investigations and roughly 7,800 cases are pending payment. Seventy-five percent of those cases were at least a year old from the initial claim date.

The department disputed the criticism, saying it is an “erroneous conclusion” because auditors didn’t analyze a random sample of cases. But it agreed to some of the Democrat’s recommendations to reduce the backlog.